I've refined my technique for making globes of sand over the past nine years. In five minutes I can teach the basic technique; it usually takes beginners about ten minutes to make a grapefruit-sized globe. The globes have an evocative "planetary" quality that has inspired me to use them as elements of many nature sculptures over the years.

At this event, I taught everyone in sight to make sand globes (and encouraged them to teach others!) Then, as in all my collaborative art-with-nature events, we assembled them without a predetermined plan in a spontaneously evolving art installation on the beach.

The intermolecular force that attracts water molecules to each other and to the grains of sand is the "glue" that holds the globe together. (See this video of water in outer space to get an idea of the strength of attraction that water has to itself.)